Tuesday, May 8, 2012

Guess the Genotype #69

This is one of the dogs that Ivan Pavlov used in his rather famous experiments. The device attached to the face was used during experimentation to collect saliva. Like Laika, the first animal to orbit our planet, this dog is most likely a street mutt of indeterminate breed. It was common practice to gather some of the ubiquitous mutts for use in experiments of all sorts. Whereas Laika was probably part terrier, this dog appears to possibly have some collie ancestry. As for genotype, it's quite simple. The only parts that may cause confusion are due to the fact that this is a taxidermied animal.

To begin, this dog is clearly tan point. Though it is possible that it may carry recessive black, I find it highly unlikely since recessive black is not very common in dogs as a whole. It is usually only seen in a rather small number of breeds. So, this dog must be atat tan point.

As for the intensity of the red on the dog, it is moderate. Going with the theory that the Chinchilla locus controls all variants of red indensity, that would make this dog cchcch moderate red.

There also appears to be a bit of a mask to the face. Though it's possible this may be due to dirt on the mount, I suspect that it is, in fact, a mask. Since this dog is a mutt and masking is not overtly common in dogs, I am going to assume that it is EmE masked carrying non-masked.

Next is the white seen on this dog. I believe that this dog is genetically solid. The pale bits that can be seen appear to be from hair loss, likely due to the age of the mount. The pattern does not follow what would be expected from any of the alleles on the Spotting locus. As such, this dog must be SS solid.